UPDATE: We recommend WordPress…unlimited Website options, but if you need help with Website Tonight please continue reading.

I get a tremendous amount of traffic from people researching GoDaddy’s Website Tonight. Some are looking for reviews, but most are looking for ways to customize or change something on their site. So I went through my stats and copied about 100 questions. Many are the same and I am going to try and answer them all for you in this post. Wish me luck 🙂

Properties Page

If you are on a page you are designing look up to your Website Tonight toolbar. You will see a drop down area that lets you choose which page you want to work on. Right next to that you will see “Show Properties”. Click on that.

You have access to the title-tag (browser title in this program), description and keywords in your properties section. All the meta tag areas are listed with boxes where you can customize your meta tags for each page. There is also a place for custom meta tags.

“How can I change the URL?”

In your properties page you will see an area called “Filename”. You can change your url structure there. Remember to use dashed instead of underscores as the program automactically does.

“What is Heading Title in the Properties Page?”

On each Website Tonight template there is a section on each page that replicated whatever you named the page. If you delete the text in the Heading Title on the properties page the program won’t autogenerate text for that section.

“How do I customize my XML sitemap?”

At the bottom of your properties page you will see “Sitemap Details”. Here you can choose frequency and priority for each page. OR if you exit the designer you can click on “manage” (top green bar) and then click on “google sitemap” here you will see every page of you site and can choose the frequency and priority.

“How do I add Google Analytics to Website Tonight?”

Go to your footer and then go up to “insert” and click on Script. This will open up a box, enter your Google Analytics code here and click “OK”. For whatever reason if I use the editor it right justify the script box it places the code where Google wants it.

XML Sitemap

You don’t have to create one, the program automatically creates one and updates the sitemap as you add or delete pages. You can choose your frequency and priority in the properties page of each site OR if you exit the designer you can click on “manage” (top green bar) and then click on “google sitemap” here you will see every page of you site and can choose the frequency and priority.

Organizing Your Site and Navigation Structure

If you are out of the design section you can click on “manage” and then “organize site”. When that page opens you will see all the pages of your site. You can drag and drop pages to create subpages and it is here that you can tell the program which pages to publish and which not to publish. You can organize your main navigation here, but there is an easier way to do that…

Modifying Navigation Order and “Why is the navigation not the same for every page?”

Go to your home page. If you look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. You want to be on “Page” and there you will see “Edit Navigation”. Here you can use the up and down arrows to move pages. If it is at the bottom and you want it near the top and you have 15 pages it is quicker to delete it and then go back to the top and reinsert the page/button.

You have 5 options for each navigation button:

Email- add an email address here

Forum- in case you paid for a forum for your site

Page – Which ever page you want it to go to

Upload- you can link to a PDF, Word file etc

URL- You can link out of your site.

OK, AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BOX you will see two options:

Copy Menu buttons across all pages

Add or delete menu buttons when adding or deleting pages

Think about these carefully! If you are creating a new site you just want to get your main navigation in place for those page then use the the “copy menu” option. If you are creating a new page that is going to end up being a subpage of another uncheck “add or delete menu…”. When you use the organize site option subpages never end up being an issue, but it is up to you if you want to check or uncheck this box.

“How do I Change the Header Pic in Website Tonight?”

You can be in any page for this, but you must be in the design section. If you look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. You want to be on “Page” and then click on “edit template images”. Here you will be able to see all the template images and change them. Website Tonight does have an image library you can use.

“How Do I Add a Page in Website Tonight?”, “How do I delete a page?”

You have two options. You can go to “organize site” and add a page or if you are within the designer If you look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. You want to be on “Page” and then you can see “Add Page”. Click on it, name it, choose a page layout and click ok and you are done. You can delete pages in the organize site section.

“Can I insert flash?”

Yes, choose the page you want to add flash to look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. Click on “insert”. Here you can insert, Flash, scripts, RSS feeds, images, forms, tables, date, calender, video and music.

“Do I have to pay monthly?”

No, actually you pay for the year in advance. You can pay for up to three years. Use a coupon code

“How do I Crop and Resize a photo?”

Well, you cannot crop. You can resize a photo in that it looks smaller than it did, but if you have a 1 MB photo it is still going to be 1 MB. Resize your photos offline with a photo editing program and if possible save for the Web so the page will load faster.

“How do I wrap text around a picture?”

Once you have a photo inserted click on it. A box will pop up and give you several options:

You can define width and height

You can add a border and determine its width

Choose a border color

Add padding veritcally and horizontally

Wrap text to the left, right or on either side of the photo

You can rotate and flip images and also change the hue, saturation, contrast, brightness etc.

You can add text to the photo

Alt text

“How do I add Alt tags?”

See the question above. There is an “alt text” option within the image properties menu.

“How do I add an Internal Link?”

Highlight your text and then go up to your tool bar. There is a small grey vertical box with an arrow. Hover over it and it a box with options will pop out. You will see the “create link” icon; click on that.

You have options

E-mail

URL

Page

Upload

Anchor

“Open in new window” is an option with a check box.

Preview- “What does it do”, “it doesn’t work”

Preview allows you to look at the site and play with all the links before you publish it for the first time or it can let you see changes before you publish. It is a nice feature that allows you to double check. Sometimes a pop-up blocker will stop the preview from working.

“How do I use Backup/Restore?”

If you mess something up you just go to the “manage” button outside of the designer, click on “Backup/Restore” and then choose the date of the last save.

“How do I use the Built in Google Webmaster Tools?”

Once you launch your site exit the designer and then look at the bottom of the page. Click on Google Webmaster Tools and click “accept” to create a new account. Here you can automatically verify your site and submit your sitemap.

“What about a 404 Error Page?”

Go to your hosting settings at the bottom of the page. Click settings and “404 error behavior”. You have 3 options to choose from:

Make my 404 Page my Home Page

Use Custom 404 Error Page: (i.e. YourPage.html)

Use GoDaddy.com, Inc.’s Default 404 Error Page

“How do I change the font in the navigation?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “advanced style options”. Here you will see the coding of the site. You can copy the area you want to change and then paste it in the box below. Change whatever you want and check “Apply” and then click “OK”.

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “advanced color options”. You can change any of the following:

Body Background:

Header Title Text:

Sub-header Title Text:

Page Title Text:

Footer Text:

Hyperlinks Text:

Hyperlinks Mouse-over Text:

Hyperlinks Visited Text:

Navigation Text:

Navigation Mouse-over Text:

Navigation Visited Text

You can add color codes, click a color or choose an RGB.

“I chose a template and now I hate it. How can I change it?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “template and color”. Choose any template or color option and the site will change and typically the text remains, but copy it just in case.

“I want a login page for clients”

You can have password protected page, but the page can only have one password. You can also tell Google ignore the page.

“Where do I upload files?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “Manage” and then “Upload Files and Images”. You can upload here, but you can also upload images when you click “insert image” within the site designer.

I don’t have the Website Tonight site up yet, I’m trying to include a background image for my page but can’t figure out how to do it. I’m figuring I need to edit the CSS code to do it but am not sure exactly where to do it.

I want to do something similar to a background like in the Bangkok Restaurant example above (i.e., the batik-looking, gray background.

Mike, the background on the bangkok site came with the template.
I would recommend hiring someone that can play with your CSS code to do what you want.

Changing the background isn’t always easy. Also, look at the template images for your template. Sometimes there is a pic that repeats to create the current background. You can create your own, but it may not end up looking as nice as you would like. Also, I would recommend looking at all the templates and just looking at the backgrounds. You can change almost everything else. It may solve your issue.

I can not get all of the tools for designing my web pages on Website Tonight. For example: I won’t get the “Italics” button but I’ll get the “Bold” button and over on the right hand side of the page (in design view) I will have 2 “exit designer” and 2 “help” links. No one at godaddy can seem to figure this out even when I send them a screen shot. I am using the latest version of Firefox, have the latest versions of Adobe and Java, etc. When I accessed the site from a computer at work everything was fine. But when I access it from this computer I am on now (home) I can’t get it to work. It has to be something in my computer, any suggestions? I can send you a screen shot if you would like so you can see what I am talking about. Thanks. Andrea

Andrea, I have had some IE issues, but it was an older version. The only time I have had a problem with Firefox is when I have not cleared my private data in awhile. Try that out and if it still doesn’t work I have an email address for you 🙂

I want to downgrade my website tonight account to free hosting. I called for help, but they told me I had to cancel my account, then rebuild my site. Is there any way to save my site so that I don’t have to rebuild it?

I added 2 forms to my site. Both email me the same “subject” in the emails i get when the form is submitted. How do i change the subject so i can distinguish the 2 forms when i get an email? Also, some of my fields are yellow and some are white. how do i change the colors?

Hey … I am trying to edit the CSS file to maximize my screen size and not have such a huge border with unused grey area. I am not sure how to do it, and the godaddy people can’t help with editing the CSS. Do you know how I would do this?

i was wondering about my banner i have on my website and on every page it loads is there any way i can just have it on the main page and have different banners for each section. if so how would i do this thank you.

I can’t figure out how to link to an upload or anchor. I hit the “globe” tool, and bring up the options (E-mail, URL, Page, Upload and Anchor), but with the latter two, you get a big, white blank box, to which I can do NOTHING. All I can do is submit “OK” (or, to have something open in a new box). When the big, white blank box appears, it would seem that you are supposed to be able to browse to an uploaded image or track an anchor point, but — nothing. PLEASE HELP! Thanks.

Molly, which browser are you using? Every time they add an upgrade to their system I have problem with either Internet Explorer or Firefox. Firefox was working great for a long time for me and no IE is the only thing that works for me. Sometimes refreshing your browser can help. I wish I had another answer for you. Try that and let me know.

@Molly – Regarding your problem: can’t figure out how to link to an upload or anchor. I hit the “globe” tool, and bring up the options (E-mail, URL, Page, Upload and Anchor), but with the latter two, you get a big, white blank box, to which I can do NOTHING. All I can do is submit “OK” (or, to have something open in a new box). When the big, white blank box appears, it would seem that you are supposed to be able to browse to an uploaded image or track an anchor point, but — nothing.

You will get a blank space in the Upload box unless you have previously uploaded a file or image while in you first page that shows up when you log in – choosing green navigation, clicking on “Manage” and then “Upload Files and “Images.” After that, when you choose the Globe tool when editing Page content, you will get a list to choose from of your files you have uploaded to your site.

I am a DJ and I want to let my customers download an entertainment questionnaire from my website tonight site. I figured out how to upload the PDF but how do I insert it into a field with a button for customers to click on and download?

My IE6 issue is that when in page design mode, I cannot click on the link that gets me to page properties. When I use Firefox I can click on the link, so I know it is something with IE. It works fine on my work computer, so I know it is some setting on my home computer.

Is this the only website tonight forum around. It would seem there would be a popular one, but after using it for two years, this is the first one that I have found.

I’m having trouble making the links i put into my homepage in color. I want them to pop! Yes, I see the color font button for text editing, but it doesn’t work where I really need it… on my links! Also WST offers very limited design with templates. Yeah i know there are dozens to choose from, but they all have huge banners at the top that take up way too much space and they can’t be over-ridden. Even if you choose the “Clean Start” template, it has the same restriction and won’t let you use the space the way you want up at the top.

I started with a template and have figured out how to change almost everything I need to fit the design I want. Expect for one thing! Is there a way to change the margin/gutter width between the columns in the page layout templates?

A newbie with Web Tonight: started out ok about a month ago. The site is to contain a lot of photos and a lesser amount of videos, but it seems the more material I upload, the more problems I have. The most irritating is that altho the site says “30MG limit” for limit on video uploads, I cannot upload a 20MB file. Tried about 10 times so far, After “uploading” for about 20 minutes in Firefox or IE, error box comes up saying “Your file is larger than the 4MB limit” I did manage to upload 2 videos earlier in the game (10 and 16MB), but now nothing works. Even downgraded from IE8 to IE7. Help?

hello. i have recently become a member of website tonight, I am trying to create my website by clicking on the TEMPLATES icon and nothing will load. I have been trying to view the tepmlates for about two days now. Every time i click on TEMPLATES it says loading, and nothing happens. I’ve tried clearing the browsing history, using alterante browsers, installing the latest adobe flash player, even running a disk clean -up to try and fix the problem. I am paying for a website that i havent even been able to create. Please if someone can help me i would appericate it.

I notice when i use the latest version of Firefox, and add a new row of a table, it right corner justifies the text in a cell. If I am using IE, it right center justifies it. Is there a reccommended browser for website tonight? It seems the funcionality of website tonight is different based upon which browser you happen to be using.

“Hey … I am trying to edit the CSS file to maximize my screen size and not have such a huge border with unused grey area. I am not sure how to do it, and the godaddy people can’t help with editing the CSS. Do you know how I would do this?”
I started with a template and have figured out how to change almost everything I need to fit the design I want. Expect for one thing! Is there a way to change the margin/gutter width between the columns in the page layout templates?
There is so much space between the columns.